START HERE ABOUT MY PRODUCTS TOOLS I USE CASE STUDIES

HOW I SOLD MY AMAZON FBA BUSINESS FOR

$425,000

Back in the old days of 2015, I discovered

Amazon FBA and selling private label products
on Amazon. Now I've been able to sell an
Amazon FBA business.

Up until that point, I never really understood how

easy it was to get private label products
manufactured in China, shipped to Amazon, and
then sold and shipped via Amazon Prime. All of
this happened while I didn't have to pack and
ship a single item thanks to the Amazon
warehouses and their ful llment processes
(FBA).

I've written about how I started my Amazon FBA business extensively in the past.

So, the primary focus of my article today is why and how I was able to sell an Amazon FBA business that
was about 2 and a half years old.

The sell of my business closed just last month with a price tag of $425,000.

I want to share exactly how I did it.

THE IDEA AND THE NUMBERS

Out of respect to the new buyer, I won't be sharing what the products were or the URL of my website.
However, my products were in the “Home Goods” niche. If you have a house, then one of these types of
products is probably in your home.

So, it's a consumer good.

The idea came to my a few years ago as I was looking to replace something in my house and I could not
nd a variation that I was 100% satis ed with on Amazon.com. So, after hearing about the success that
several people I knew (including Chris Guthrie, Scott Voelker, Greg Mercer, and others) were having, I
decided this would be my chance to try out the Amazon FBA business.

You can read about how to pick the right products to sell on Amazon here.

What I found was a niche that had high demand (almost everyone has one of these in their home), and
then a variation that helped me to stand out from the crowd (low competition for this particular variation).

As a result, my rst product started selling well almost from day one. You can see that in my rst 30
days, I sold over $4,000 worth of goods.

After a couple month, I decided to add more variations. By the time I sold the business last month, I had
built up to 8 total SKUs in my niche. Not a lot of products, but enough to be quite pro table.

Here's a look at some of the numbers:

As I ran sponsored ads, grew my related niche site (more on that later), did promotional giveaways, and
focused on selling on Amazon, the revenue quickly grew from $4,000 a month to over $60,000 a month
in peak months.

Of course, when you are selling physical products the pro t margins are not as high as digital product or
an a liate website. However, the trailing 12 months prior to the sell my Amazon FBA business was
netting just over $14,000 a month on average.

It was a great and pro table business!

However, when I started to see the potential price tag for what I could sell the entire business for, I
decided to pull the trigger.

I've been selling products on Amazon since 2014.

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The result was a nice $425,000 pay day.

WHAT ABOUT THE NICHE SITE?

Shortly after creating my rst product on Amazon, I launched a niche site in the same space. So,
imagine I was selling a kitchen tool on Amazon. I hypothetically would have launched a niche site
reviewing kitchen tools and “how to” tips for cooks (or something similar).

My niche site started to grow, and after 1 year it was making about $3,000 a month in a liate
commissions on it's own. The best part was that a good part of those a liate commissions were coming
from referring visitors to my own products on Amazon through my own Associates link. Yes, Amazon is
ne with this.

Because I had the experience of knowing how to build niche sites and rank quickly in Google, I was able
to leverage this skill to grow my Amazon FBA business even faster by referring a bunch of outside
tra c.

Now, I should be clear that MOST of the sales of my products came directly from the tra c on Amazon.
However, my niche site de nitely sent tra c and was helpful in growing the business.

Having this niche site along with the Amazon FBA piece was a nice selling point to potential buyers. It
made the business slightly less risky, since the niche site was referring tra c as well outside of the
Amazon ecosystem.

WHY I DECIDED TO SELL

I wrote a blog post previously outlining the pros and cons of selling a business.

When I analyzed everything, I decided that the cash up front would be nice to have to re-invest in other
business ventures that I'm more excited about. After running the business for almost 2 years, I had lost
my interest level in those particular products a bit.

I've always found that if I invest where I'm most passionate at the time, things tend to work out. This isn't
some golden rule of thumb that everyone should follow, it just happens to work for me.

I had been able to pocket $14,000 a month over the past couple of years and so losing that revenue
stream was the biggest con. However, I always have 3 or 4 business ventures or projects going on at
once, so I truly felt like having the capital to invest in these other ventures was a good reason to sell.

WHERE I LISTED MY BUSINESS FOR SALE

I sold my Amazon FBA buiness on EmpireFlippers.com. Honestly, I was surprised how fast it sold.

You can see the original Empire Flippers listing here.

I had the expectation that it would take at least 3 to 4 months to nd an interested buyer. However, after
about 40 days, I already had a verbal agreement with a buyer after negotiating the deal.

I was also very impressed with how professional the Empire Flippers process was. I know lots of people
that have had positive experiences selling Adsense sites and other businesses to them. They were very
helpful in getting my P&L cleaned up and gathering the other documentation necessary for potential
buyers to look at.

Within a couple of weeks, I had received several inquiries from potential buyers and did a call with a few
of them.

In a nutshell, I would de nitely recommend Empire Flippers if you are looking to sell your Amazon FBA
business. I've personally known Justin and Joe (the founders) over there since, well, before they started
Empire Flippers.

NEGOTIATING THE DEAL

The business was listed at a sale price of $456,256. I knew going in that this list price was on the high
end at a 32x monthly multiple.

After a few calls with potential buyers, the king of deal makers gave me a call. His name is Ace
Chapman.

I had met Ace brie y once before at a conference, but we had never done any business together. Ace is
someone that closes A LOT of deals on Empire Flippers, so I knew that if he was interested in my
business, the chances were good that the deal would close.

As a sidenote, I think Ace has a REALLY interesting business model. He buys tons of online businesses
on his own or by bringing in partners. Then he basically allows the partners to run the business, or Ace
has a team if he does a deal on his own run the business.

You can read a bit more about Ace Chapman's story here.

Ace and I did a couple of calls and just chatted a bit. Honestly, they were pretty casual calls with a little
bit a business mixed in. He asked a few questions about numbers, the website, and the Amazon side of
the business.

Then a couple of days later, he made me an o er. Just like that.

Yes, he o ered me less than I was asking. I think his rst o er was $400,000…or $56,000 less than I
was asking.

We settled on $425,000 and called it a day. The negotiation was more of a formality honestly. I knew I
had listed the business a little high, and Ace knew his $400k o er was a little low.

So, we settled in the middle where we were both happy. The nal sale price was about a 30x monthly
multiple of net earnings.

We also negotiated payment terms and inventory payment separately (I got an additional payment for
the inventory I had on hand on top of the $425k).

The terms are roughly as follows:

$175k up front upon close (already happened)

$150k after 6 months
Then monthly payments based on % of pro ts until the rest is paid o .
If the total isn't paid o after 2 years, there's a balloon payment to nish the deal.

So, I may have been a bit lenient is the payout terms, but I'm okay with it because of a couple of things:

1. I don't need the money right now

2. I know Ace is good for the money
3. I'm con dent the Amazon FBA business will continue performing well.

Overall, I'm happy with the negotiated price and terms of the deal.

TRANSFERRING THE BUSINESS AND CHALLENGES

If you are wondering how to transfer an Amazon FBA business…well, it's not easy. There are several
hoops you have to jump through, but everything was done in compliance with Amazon.

Before I listed the business for sale on Empire Flippers, I had done a bunch of prep work on my own. In
addition to the 8 products for this brand, I also had another dozen or so products on the SAME Amazon
account.

I knew a potential buyer wouldn't want these other dozen unrelated products, so I had to gure out how
to get the “Home goods” products on one account, and my other unrelated products on another
account.

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S TA R T YO U R O W N B LO G TO DAY

In a nutshell, here is what I did:

1. Opened a new Amazon seller central account under a DIFFERENT legal business entity. Amazon only
allows one amazon seller account per person or legal business. Since I had a separate legal business
entity that didn't have a seller central account, I was just ne opening a brand new one.
2. I then linked the email addresses in both the old and new seller central accounts; essentially notifying
Amazon that there is some kind of relationship between these accounts.
3. Sold out the inventory on the old account and then shipped new inventory to the new seller central
account. If anything wasn't selling fast enough, I just did a removal order, then shipped those
removed products into the new account.
4. I did NOT have to create new listings or anything. You can just ship the goods into the new seller
central account and use the exact same listing as before. This means all the reviews, star ratings, and
everything are the same.
5. When the new buyer had purchased, I just gave him the login to the new seller central account.

There were de nitely plenty of challenges that came up during the process of transferring the business.
One of them was that Ace's new venture partner on this deal was a Canadian citizen and didn't have his
business entity set up yet. So, we had to wait a few weeks for him to get a US business entity set up and
bank accounts opened.

Once that was completed, we sent a message to Amazon seller support letting them know that I had
sold the business and that we needed to change the Tax ID, bank account information, and more on the
backend of seller central.

I felt like it was important to get this “approval” from Amazon rst, before just changing bank account
and other information.

Amazon gave us the green light and then we just made all the changes to the new owner's information.
We've had no issues whatsoever since changing the information and it's been a couple of months since
that change took place.

The other challenges were going through the process of transferring the website in addition to the eBay
account and the Walmart.com account (the other places I also sold my products).

The Empire Flippers support has gone out of their way to handle most of the transfer process
themselves. The nal step that they are still working on is getting the Amazon a liate codes all
changed from my a liate id to the new buyers.

So, I made the verbal deal with Ace sometime in mid-October. Then working with Ace's partner and
Empire Flippers to get all the due diligence and then transfer process complete has taken from then until
now (Jan 9th). So, it's been a 2 and a half month process to get things nalized.

However, despite some of the challenges that are likely to occur with just about any business sale, I'm
happy with the end result.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Now that my rst Amazon FBA has sold, what's next?

Well, as mentioned, I've already got several other products selling on Amazon. In addition, with the new
cash infusion, I plan to invest heavily in new Amazon products. In fact, we already have several in the
works: either in production, design, or research phase.

I'm hoping to build a revenue stream just as strong as the FBA business I just sold in the next 12 months.
Even though some may think that it's too late and that the competition is too high on Amazon already, I
see things a bit di erently. I don't see Amazon getting any smaller as a platform anytime soon.

More and more people are going to be buying more and more things on Amazon. I plan to be there
ready to sell them those things.

In addition, I've already launched my new software product, Table Labs.

And of course, I'm hoping to buy a new website as shared in my last update here. So, I've got plenty of
things “cooking” right now and so I'll continue to share the ups and downs in future updates.

You can also check out Niche Pursuits Insider, where I share more tutorial videos on how to nd ideas,
build and rank niche websites, and more.

Have questions? Leave a comment below and I'll do my best to answer.

AMAZON FBA & ECOMMERCE

By Spencer Haws
June 18, 2019 | 30 Comments

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30 COMMENTS

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

L E AV E A C O M M E N T

JEFF

What percentage did Empire Flippers take in the deal?

SPENCER HAWS

Their standard brokerage fee is 15%

ZUMZUM

hi, but how looks importing stu from China, is it problematic (taxes,
documents etc)? how it looks when I want only couple things for a start
(later you buying containers with stu so maybe this is complicated but
how it looks for the start). I have some ideas, I even bought couple things
from alliexpress but if I want to sell it legally, this is problematic (I am from
Poland)

GORAN DUSKIC

Hey Spencer,

Congrats on your latest exit! 🙂 Just out of curiosity, were you rushing the
deal for some reason, or just went soft because you liked the buyer? I
don’t know all the details, so I could be wrong, but it seems like you could
have gotten much more, especially if you include the 15% brokerage fee.

Was the niche website that is sending the tra c included in the deal? Do
you plan to continue making money with a liate commissions on this
product? Was the buyer not interested in the website, or you didn’t want to
sell it? Or was this just a regular product website that was sending tra c
to Amazon, and it was included in the deal?

SPENCER HAWS

Hey Goran, great questions. No, I wasn’t rushing the sale.

Getting 32x (my original list price) is basically unheard of for
FBA businesses. So, I knew it was too high. I think the typical
multiple is 25 to 28x. So, I actually got above market value at
30x.

Yes, the niche site was included in the deal.

MARC

Spencer,
Congratulations on the sale! I’ve been following your Amazon FBA
updates since the beginning, partly because my wife and I were in the
process of starting an FBA business right around the same time you
started posting about it.

We also sold our business in 2017. The interesting thing is our sales and
pro t numbers were very similar to yours, but you got a better selling price
than we did. I completely agree with you that the niche site helps to o set
the risk. We were only selling on Amazon and our website was just a
simple site that pointed people to the products on Amazon if someone
happened to Google our brand name, but there was very little tra c to the
site. We decided pretty early on that we were likely to sell the brand, so I
didn’t want to invest a lot of time into building up website content and
tra c.

We had ours listed with a broker (not Empire Flippers) for 4 months but
wound up selling it privately to someone I met in a Facebook group for
Amazon sellers. The broker brought some interested potential buyers to
us, but nothing panned out. We wound up taking less than the broker’s list
price, but we had no broker fees and we did get 100% of the cash at the
time of the sale.

Best of luck to you with whatever website(s) you wind up buying.

SPENCER HAWS

Congrats on your sale as well! That’s interesting to hear that

you couldn’t nd a good buyer through a brokerage. Sometimes
that happens. I feel lucky that I was able to nd a great buyer so
quickly.

TIM

Only about 40% up front? Wow, it sounds like an amazing deal for the
buyer, although I don’t know how those mid six- gure deals are usually
structured.

SPENCER HAWS

Yep, it was a great deal for the buyer. But like I said, I know he’s
good for the money. So, it was also a great deal for me. In 5
months, I’ll have most of the money, so it’s not too big a deal for
me.

MARGARET

Did you sell the niche site to the buyer as part of the package, or do you
still own?

SPENCER HAWS

I sold it as a package.

BILASH DAS

This is really a great article.Thanks for sharing with us.

ANDREY

Hi Spencer,
Could you tell, about payment in installments, you agreed with the buyer
in person or is this an Empire Flippers transaction condition?

SPENCER HAWS

It’s with Empire Flippers. They act as an intermediary to

hold/verify funds, etc.

GAMER

Hello Spencer, It’s great to see you sold your business. What I think is that
you should have expanded it by doing more research into your categories.
Certainly it’s a one time payment that you are getting. You can do it again
but you have to start all over again and create new brands. You should
have given it a little more time. It’s my personal opinion.

ROB

Congrats Spencer, very happy for you.

So are you going to do this all over again? Are you getting straight back
into Amazon FBA?

SPENCER HAWS

Yes. Its not really like I”m “starting over” though. Yes, I launched
this brand back in 2015. But by early 2016 I had launched other
brands as well. So, I sold the above mentioned brand, but I still
have other brands already selling on amazon that I will continue
to grow.

ROB

Ahh I see. Once the FBA bug bites you it’s over 🙂

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to FBA in the

E.European country I live But I still took action 2
years ago and started a store.

I ful l the orders myself and it has been a providing a

full-time steady income for the last year and a half
from a handful of (less than 6) products. Sometimes I
dream about having an FBA business and how much
more success I could have had if amazon ful lled my
products.

After a long year of posting with regular envelopes

and trying to stick to under 200grams, a nice postal
o ce lady introduced me to an envelope with a at
fee for whatever you can put inside within a weight
limit of 2.5 kgs and that transformed my business.
She gets her Christmas gifts every year without fail
🙂

I’m lucky to have the post o ce 5 minutes walk from

home so I can get a bit of fresh air and exercise.

Keep up the good work Spencer.

Rob

SPENCER HAWS

Hey Rob, I see no reason why you can’t do

FBA with Amazon. It doesn’t matter where
you live. Tons of people in Europe and
China are FBA sellers on Amazon US.

BRIAN

This was very insightful Spencer–thanks for sharing it with us.

Three questions for you:

1) How is it set up so that Ace will, without a shadow of a doubt, pay you
on the scheduled dates he’s expected to pay you? Is it just the honor
system, or do you all have some sort of system in place that will (for lack of
a better word) “force” him to pay you when he’s supposed to pay you?

2) If you receive the money in multiple payments over a few months rather
than a one-time lump sum payment, how does Empire Flippers ensure that
the seller gets all of the money owed to him/her for the sale? What’s
stopping the buyer from making the rst payment, receiving access to
your site, and never paying you the remainder of the money he owes?

3) Can you discuss the actual process of how transferring your website to
the new buyer works? For example, let’s say your Amazon niche site was a
WordPress site. Is it just a matter of giving the buyer of your website your
WordPress username and password–or is he actually migrating your site
from whatever hosting provider you have to his own hosting provider, as
well?

Thanks!
-Brian

SPENCER HAWS

No problem:
1. Empire Flippers acts as an escrow/intermediary. So, they
collect and disperse the funds.
2. Empire Flippers actually still holds the domain etc until ALL
nal payments are made. So, Ace doesn’t have full owernship
over the site technically until I receive my last payment.
3. For this particular sale, I turned over the hosting account: so I
just provided hosting logins and wordpress logins. If you need
to migrate a site, the Empire Flippers handle it.

JAE JUN

Booyah. Awesome update.

Do you need to provide any ongoing support for a limited time after the
sale?
And does that mean Ace also has your manufacturing contacts or is it now
up to him to source and manufacture the same product?

Will be interesting to see whether you dabble in FBA again.

SPENCER HAWS

Thanks! Yes, I agreed to help with the transition for a couple of

months. And even if its six months down the road and they
have a couple questions, I can still help. But the new team is up
and running and I honestly don’t hear from them hardly at all.
And yes, Ace has the manufacturing contacts, so its up to him
to source products now.

ANDY

Great article! Thank you Spencer!

“I then linked the email addresses in both the old and new seller central
accounts; essentially notifying Amazon that there is some kind of
relationship between these accounts.” How do you link the email address?

PAULO

Hi,

Could you give us some details about the tax situation when you sold your
business.
And can you operate nichesites from o shore countries and same some
money on taxes?

SPENCER HAWS

The standard us tax laws apply when selling an asset in the US

as for website assets. I don’t operate anything o shore.

KATHY

Hi, I’m curious if your plans for the future products are going to continue
being unique/ dreamt-up kind of items? Or are you going to do the old
fashioned see-the-best-sellers-list approach?

CODY

Thanks for the case study Spencer! Ace bought one of my sites through
Empire Flippers a few years back. I would highly recommend them both. It
was a great experience, however I still have seller’s remorse from time to
time. Best of luck on your other ventures!

SPENCER HAWS

Yep, Ace and the Empire Flippers were both great.

RICHARD JOHNSON

You talk so much about marketing but you can’t share the real details like
product or URL? I’m from a marketing background and this level of
con dentiality makes no sense as YOU ARE IN SALES! it’s all about
product, price, and promotion. Lots of stories on the web.

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